How Allies Recreated the Enigma Encoder

Published: August 26, 1987

To the Editor:

In ''North Deserves a Reward'' (Op-Ed, July 24), John Hutchinson states, ''Winston Churchill never told Parliament about Enigma - the decoding machine the Poles stole from the Germans - which gave the Allies access to German secrets during the war.''

Professor Hutchinson, unfortunately, errs on the side of simplification. Enigma has been a popular subject for writers with great imagination. I would refer those who seek historical facts to the most reliable source, Gen. Gustave Bertrand of the French Department of Military Ciphers (Services du Chiffre) and his memoir, ''Enigma'' (Edition Plon).

As early as 1932, General Bertrand bought a bundle of miscellaneous secret documents dealing with the use of the encoding machine from a functionary of the German Ministry of Defense known as Asche. General Bertrand came into contact with the English intelligence service and with the Second Bureau of the Polish Army, and gave them the documents he had received. Almost seven years went by before Polish mathematicians, having developed the Rejewski Theorem on the product of transpositions, were able to reproduce Enigma with the help of cryptoanalysts.

On July 24, 1939, General Bertrand, acting as a representative of France, arrived in Warsaw accompanied by two British assistants. There, under conditions of maximum security, the Poles demonstrated a machine that duplicated the functions of Enigma. This machine was built by the Warsaw company AVA.

The Poles reproduced few specimens of this machine. Two were sent by diplomatic pouch to Paris. One was kept by General Bertrand for France. The other he took personally to London on Aug. 16, 1939, where he delivered it into the hands of Sir Stewart Menzies, chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. TADEUSZ BACHO Northport, L.I., Aug. 10, 1987